The role of the GM

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Cybren

I would argue that GURPS doesn't relegate the GM to being a simple "game engine" due to the number of abilities that are explicitly dependent on the GM's judgement, or at the very least, GM-player negotiation.

That's not really what I mean. Let's take a specific example. In a game, a character wants to leap across a 12-foot chasm with a running start. In (original) D&D, the referee looks at the character's Strength and Dexterity, maybe rolls a die to look busy, and decides either yes, the character makes the leap, or no, he falls in. In GURPS, the player can point to his character's Basic Move of 5 and page 352 of the Basic Set and tell the GM, "Unless there's something going on that I don't know about, I can make that jump." The GM can either agree and apply the rule mechanically, or he can disagree and arbitrary change the rules just to be a jerk. Assuming he hadn't led the players to believe beforehand that the jumping rules weren't going to be followed. In other words, he's just plugging in rules and reporting outcomes.

I'm not saying all GURPS GMs do this. I'm just saying that the more rules being used in a game, the less a GM gets to decide for himself. The earliest RPGs expected the GM to just make up reasonable stuff; later RPGs tend to bake that stuff into the rules, making the GM more of a rules-implementer than a judge.

[trooper6]

For me...for my idea of fun:
I think the role of the GM is to play with the Players, not against them. Since I reject the notion of an antagonistic relationship between player and GM and do not play with people who see things that way, I don't fee the need to have an iron-clad set of rule to protect the players from tyrannical GMs. Rules heavy or rules light doesn't matter. I play with people I trust, I GM for people I trust. No problems.

I was specifically turned off of Burning Wheel by regular comments in the text that indicated the game creator believed GMs to be tyrannical and made a rules set to combat that. I don't want to play in a rules set that assumes GMs are the worst.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by trooper6

For me...for my idea of fun:
I think the role of the GM is to play with the Players, not against them. Since I reject the notion of an antagonistic relationship between player and GM and do not play with people who see things that way, I don't fee the need to have an iron-clad set of rule to protect the players from tyrannical GMs. Rules heavy or rules light doesn't matter. I play with people I trust, I GM for people I trust. No problems.

Yes, exactly. I'm perfectly willing to consult the opinions of my players on whether something makes sense to them.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Cybren

On another forum someone made a thread conjecturing that unclear rules are 'unfair' to players and empower 'tyrannical' DMs to abuse their players. You can probably tell by my use of quotations that I don't share that persons opinion, but I'm curious what other people think of the idea of GMs as neutral interpreters of a 'complete' rules system rather than arbiters of rules in their own right. Something the person said to me (before getting increasingly hostile that I don't share his opinion) stuck out as just flat out wrong:



emphasis theirs.

This argument strikes me as less one about the role of the GM and more about the role of rules. That is, if you have to step in and fix the rules, are they any good? My answer is: No, they aren't... depending on what you're talking about.

As a principle, you should try to write your rulesets in a complete manner. You shouldn't say "Here's some theory, now go do the hard work!" For example, GURPS High Tech does all the hard work of figuring out the exact stats of guns for you, and giving you the rules necessary to cover weird situations. We think that's good. GURPS Spaceships doesn't cover how to deal with ships that are between SMs very well; we call that bad, because we have to step in and "cover that hole."

However, I believe that rules are tools. At the end of they day, they do not create gameplay, they facilitate the GM and the players in creating gameplay. Your job as a writer is to help them. That does mean trying to be as complete as possible: if you open a ruleset and it outlines everything for you and practically runs the game on its own, that's much easier than a ruleset that requires a ton of homework. On the other hand, it tends to be very constrained. Compare and contrast GURPS with D&D 4e. GURPS will not "run your game for you" and takes far more work than D&D 4e, but you can do a ton more with GURPS than D&D 4e. Does that mean D&D 4e is a better game than GURPS? I think most people on this forum would vociferously disagree, because GURPS does a better job of helping them create the gameplay that they want than D&D 4e does.

So sometimes, your job is to point a GM in a direction, offer some inspiration and some theory and then let him go. This is often the case in NPC design, for example, where you don't want to hardcode all of the possible NPCs into the ruleset ("What?! A princess who can also fight! Inconceivable!" is not what a ruleset should be saying). But sometimes you want to be pretty explicit in what you're trying to do and cover as much material as possible (When researching a topic and presenting it in a supplement ala GURPS High Tech or Low-Tech), or when creating a gameplay framework (like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy; you need to have a really good idea of what spells are available and which aren't, and what point level starting characters will be, etc).

To say that a ruleset "must be as complete as possible" is too narrow a view, likely focused completely on that "create a gameplay framework" element. For example, in your very quote, he even says that it's up to the GM to create the NPCs. He's right, but if a ruleset was "as complete as possible" it would do that for you too, and we don't actually want that. He might snort and say that he means "Within reason" and to "apply common sense," but sometimes "the obvious" needs to be said, because it's not always obvious to everyone, or it reveals underlying principles that people take for granted without understanding.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by trooper6

For me...for my idea of fun:
I think the role of the GM is to play with the Players, not against them. Since I reject the notion of an antagonistic relationship between player and GM and do not play with people who see things that way, I don't fee the need to have an iron-clad set of rule to protect the players from tyrannical GMs. Rules heavy or rules light doesn't matter. I play with people I trust, I GM for people I trust. No problems.

Yup. When the groups I know have rules discussions in game, they tend to take the form of someone saying "hang on, doesn't X apply", and if it's going to take more than a few seconds to look up the GM will usually say "fair enough, it does for now and I'll check later". It's not as though success or failure for the party hangs on a single action.

Originally Posted by trooper6

I was specifically turned off of Burning Wheel by regular comments in the text that indicated the game creator believed GMs to be tyrannical and made a rules set to combat that. I don't want to play in a rules set that assumes GMs are the worst.

That idea does seem to be a trend in much of that first wave of the indie game movement: bad GMs can spoil games, so we will prevent that - whether they remove the GM role completely, rotate it between players, or explicitly make it just another player in terms of control level.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

That idea does seem to be a trend in much of that first wave of the indie game movement: bad GMs can spoil games, so we will prevent that - whether they remove the GM role completely, rotate it between players, or explicitly make it just another player in terms of control level.

That's why I have no particular use for that movement. On one hand, it denies me the ability to capitalize on my strengths as (I believe) a good GM by attracting a large population of enthusiastic players with my superior art. And on the other, it's quite unnecessary, because there is a simple and infallible remedy for bad GMing: Don't play with that GM. For that matter, I've found that offering to resign from a campaign that wasn't giving me what I was looking for was surprisingly effective in getting the GM and the other players to change their style of play.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's why I have no particular use for that movement. On one hand, it denies me the ability to capitalize on my strengths as (I believe) a good GM by attracting a large population of enthusiastic players with my superior art. And on the other, it's quite unnecessary, because there is a simple and infallible remedy for bad GMing: Don't play with that GM. For that matter, I've found that offering to resign from a campaign that wasn't giving me what I was looking for was surprisingly effective in getting the GM and the other players to change their style of play.

Do realize that you have a particularly ideal player/gm situation, and the rest of us burn with envy at it.

There are more players than good gms, and not every good gm can use the same players. Such games are trying to make up for the amount of effort and skill it requires to GM well. That said, the path may be a dead end that plateaus at a given level of play.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ericthered

There are more players than good gms, and not every good gm can use the same players. Such games are trying to make up for the amount of effort and skill it requires to GM well. That said, the path may be a dead end that plateaus at a given level of play.

I've had choices between bad games and no games. I chose no games for several years. I think it was worth it.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

That idea does seem to be a trend in much of that first wave of the indie game movement: bad GMs can spoil games, so we will prevent that - whether they remove the GM role completely, rotate it between players, or explicitly make it just another player in terms of control level.

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's why I have no particular use for that movement. On one hand, it denies me the ability to capitalize on my strengths as (I believe) a good GM by attracting a large population of enthusiastic players with my superior art. And on the other, it's quite unnecessary, because there is a simple and infallible remedy for bad GMing: Don't play with that GM. For that matter, I've found that offering to resign from a campaign that wasn't giving me what I was looking for was surprisingly effective in getting the GM and the other players to change their style of play.

I think that's a bit of a simplification about how GMing can go wrong. Perhaps even a misconception about the intent. I'm not 100% sure. But here's why I think so:

• An actually tyrannical GM cannot be fixed by such a ruleset. S/he will either refuse to use such a ruleset, houserule away these aspects of the ruleset, or find ways to 'compensate'.
• Not every suboptimal GM is so bad that no gaming is a better option. Sometimes all one wants is for the GM's campaign to become a little better in a given area of proficiency.
• There was a third point but I lost it somewhere.

So I think it's more proper to see those mechanics not as some sort of leash to keep tyranogamesauruses safe for everyone, but rather as a mixture of training wheels and safety belts for GMs who are decent overall but have some sort of issue with player initiative (among other things). I actually know one GM who is decent overall, but tends to become nervous and antagonistic when he has an impression that the players are presenting him with a course of action that he didn't anticipate and/or that may have unforeseen consequences affecting the plot. Having a set of guidelines for handling such things would perhaps help reduce the insecurity on that aspect of GMing for him. (He is in fact considering trying out a more indie-phylum game system sooner or later.)

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I think that's a bit of a simplification about how GMing can go wrong. Perhaps even a misconception about the intent. I'm not 100% sure. But here's why I think so:

Here are some quotes from The Burning Wheel:

pg 24. "An instinct is essentially an 'if/then' statement for the character's behavior. 'If surprised, I draw my sword.' The players allowed to program these actions and reactions into his character. Therefore, he can be assured that his character will react within certain parameters whether the player explicitly states it or not at. Think of them as a hardwired reaction from training and experience (and a little insurance that player takes out against the GM)."

pg. 35. "One of the most important aspects of ability tests in game play in Burning Wheel is the Let it Ride rule: A player shall roll once for an applicable test and shall not roll again until conditions legitimately and drastically change. Neither GM nor player can call for a retest unless those conditions are met. ... This is a hard, fast, fixed rule and is non-negotiable. If a player finds a GM calling for unnecessary retests, he is free to call him on cheating. ... The Let if Ride rule is designed to protect players from GMs who constantly call for retools until a test is failed, and to reduce the overall number of rolls at the table." pg 36 "GMs may not call for a test of the same ability every time they get an itch: 'You reach the foothills, test your Stealthy. Ok, you reach the limits of the crater-basin, test your Stealthy. Ok, you reach the wizard's compound, test your Stealthy. Ok, you climb the wall, test your Stealthy.' No. No! NO!"

pg 58. "Instincts are also player priorities for a character, but they have a different mechanical application than Beliefs. ... Instincts can also be described as player character insurance vs. GM onslaught. They are a mechanical way to ensure that your character behaves in a certain manner which can't be contravened by the GM."

pg 61. "In addition voting for new traits for a character, the GM or owning player may propose that a character lose a trait. If the GM proposes the loss of trait, a unanimous result is required for the trait to be voted off. If the owning player suggested it, a simple majority will do."

This does not sound like, "training wheels for new GMs." It seems to me like the author of Burning Wheel has a problem with GMs.